Without state assistance, Medicaid spending for North Carolina county governments will increase to more than $517 million in fiscal year 2007-2008, nearly $91 million higher than the current fiscal year, according to the North Carolina Association of County Commissioners, the [click link for full article]

Our immune system finds it difficult to eliminate tumours effectively. Deciphering the strategies it implements may increase the immune system’s effect on tumour cells and thus improve the clinical perspectives for anticancer immune therapy. At the Institut Curie, INSERM and CNRS researchers have used two-photon microscopy to demonstrate, for the first time in vivo and real-time, how T lymphocytes infiltrate a solid tumour in order to fight it. [click link for full article]

BlueCross BlueShield Association officials at a press briefing on Tuesday said that proposed federal cuts to the Medicare Advantage program could lead to sharp increases in beneficiaries’ premiums, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. Congress has approved $13 billion in cuts to the program starting this year. [click link for full article]

Exercise testing can be a powerful tool for diagnosing chronic heart and lung conditions and measuring responses to treatment, according to new research published in the European Respiratory Journal.The findings come from a three-year international research project by the European Respiratory Society’s (ERS) task force on clinical exercise testing, which has evaluated the technology and its benefits and provided recommendations on its use for clinicians. [click link for full article]

Contrary to popular wisdom, heart disease is not primarily a male disease, and is in fact statistically far more deadly when it occurs in women. Most women are not aware that heart disease is the number one killer of women, far greater than any other disease.According to reports from the American Heart Association (AHA), women are 26% more likely than men to suffer heart failure and death as their first symptom of cardiac disease. [click link for full article]

American consumers have long been skeptical about weight-loss supplements, and rightly so. With dozens of nutrients, herbs, and food extracts being marketed as aids for weight loss, there is shockingly little reliable information available concerning the safety and efficacy of any given product. [click link for full article]

Cancer cells differ from normal cells in, among other things, the way they divide. When a normal cell complies with a signal telling it to divide, it also begins to activate a “braking system” that eventually stops cell division and returns the cell to a resting state. When that braking system is faulty, uncontrolled cell division and the growth of cancer can result. Weizmann Institute scientists studied this system of brakes, and identified a number of the genes involved. [click link for full article]

Members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission on Thursday will testify before House and Senate committees with jurisdiction over Medicare about their annual report, which likely will include recommendations on revisions to the Medicare physician reimbursement formula, the Palm Beach Post reports. [click link for full article]

Many doctors should change the way they prescribe pain relievers for chronic pain in patients with or at risk for heart disease based on accumulated evidence that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), with the exception of aspirin, increase risk for heart attack and stroke, according to an American Heart Association statement published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. [click link for full article]

The tiny Drosophila fruit fly may pave the way to new methods for studying and finding treatments for heart disease, the leading cause of death in industrialized countries, according to a collaborative study by the Burnham Institute for Medical Research, UC San Diego (UCSD) and the University of Michigan. [click link for full article]